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Novice takes on veterans in Hobart race

An ocean racing novice who calls himself a glorified passenger is set to take on a trio of veteran skippers in the battle for Sydney to Hobart line honours.

This year's race fleet of 107 yachts includes four supermaxis, all of them previous winners.

Christian Beck, the new owner of last year's champion Perpetual LOYAL, now known as InfoTrack, has never experienced an offshore race.

He'll be going up against Mark Richards, who has skippered Wild Oats XI to a record eight line honours victories.

Skippering the other supermaxis will be two-time winner Neville Crichton, who is sailing billionaire friend Jim Clark's 2015 line honours winner Comanche, now LDV Comanche, and Peter Harburg, who has recorded top-five finishes in four of the past five years on different boats called Black Jack.

Businessman Beck is a relative newcomer to competitive sailing.

"I'm not really that big a sailor to be honest," he told AAP at Wednesday's race launch.

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"What we want to do to is to maximise our chance of winning and that ultimately involves me not doing anything important, because I don't have the experience,."

Beck said the boat would have a bigger mainsail and several seasoned campaigners aboard including sailing master Michael Coxon and boat captain Ty Oxley.

"Me being called the skipper is an insult to all these people that actually know what they are doing," he said.

"There's 16 professional sailors on the boat who are actually running the boat and I'm more like a glorified passenger.

"Supermaxi racing is the only sport I know where you can compete at the highest level even if you have no idea what your doing. If a few months ago I took up golf, I wouldn't be teeing off with Tiger Woods."

Crichton will be racing for the first time against his last supermaxi, Alfa Romeo (now Black Jack), which took line honours in 2009.

"I hope I won't be able to see it over my shoulder," he quipped.

"I think it's going to be incredibly competitive and if it's a light air race I'd have my money on that boat.